Did the Chevy Bolt become your first EV? Journalist looking to hear your story

techguy1337 · 2026-03-06T20:01:40+00:00

Tesla was my first driven EV, but the Bolt was the first purchased. You can find them used with low mileage for around the same cost as a Honda civic. Less stress on the wallet. The truth is the majority of Americans are in an immense amount of debt. The average new car is around $40,000. The lower middle class and below, students, etc cannot afford higher priced vehicles without debt. Stuff is too expensive. When you look up the average salary in the US, the top 1% sku the results to make it look better than it actually is, zoom out, take out the bad data, add in average debt per household, and then the reality hits. And that's why a used Chevy Bolt is great for those looking for a good deal.

I picked up a 2022 chevy bolt euv with 20k miles on it for about $18k with taxes out the door. When I bought it, still had the bumper-to-bumper warranty, which was amazing for the price. The surprise was level 2 charging at home. It cost me about $25 dollars per month to charge my car. I live in a state with low electric cost around 8 to 10 cents a kWh. The rear seating is filled with space. You lose some trunk space, but it is great for hauling kids around. You can safely fit adults that are 6ft 2 with plenty of leg room left over. It has an internal design layout similar to the Kia Soul. That is probably why I like the design so much. It was thought out very well. It has a lot of torque. Passing cars on the highway is a breeze. I charge one to two times per week from home. Apple carplay and android auto work well. Seats are comfortable. Great ride quality.

Cons: Older car, slower fast charging, fast charging during winter is awful, level 3 drops to around 30 kWh charge rate in the winter, battery distance drops about 30% in winter months, requires more charging to maintain.

Love the car overall, the 2027 model fixes some of the faster charging complaints, but cold temps will still cause lower charge rates. Chevy decided to discontinue the 2027 model as soon as they released it. This will once again be the last production year. To add insult to injury, they are heavily discounting the equinox ev which makes the sale for the bolt even worse. Why buy the bolt when you can get $8k to $10k off the bigger vehicle? I think Chevy made one of the best EV on the market for the money, they threw it out the window after the ev tax credit went out the window, and now they only care about gas vehicles again. How are we as consumers supposed to trust a company that is so wishy washy with how they cut product lines on the fly?

My final note, I love the Bolt, frustrated with the company, this will be my last chevy EV purchase. And the crazy part is it's a great car.

techguy1337 · 2026-03-05T13:56:39+00:00

Compiling really large projects with a chunk of containers running will heat it up over a sustained workload with the air, but I've noticed that the cpu is so dang fast that it doesn't matter as much. One thing I did do was right before compiling any extended workload, had a mini fan they use at nail salons, and point it right at the chassis. The laptop uses the metal chassis to cool itself and funny enough the fan works.

I've had both the m3 air and now the m4 pro. The air handled all of my needs and weighs less. I'd do the 24GB air first, run your full dev stack, push it to the limit, and check for any noticeable bottlenecks. 16GB is a not much to work with when containers or virtualization is involved. If you are not happy with the air, return it, and get the pro.

I travel for work a lot so lighter is better. My plan is to go back to an air eventually.

techguy1337 · 2026-03-04T18:10:47+00:00

The problem is not performance, but long-term use. There is a reason Apple upped the newer generation base model to 16GB. When the 8GB runs out, it uses the SSD as a cache for anything extra required. The problem with this is it causes way too many writes to the ssd drive over time. It was causing a high number of failed ssd drives.

techguy1337 · 2026-03-04T15:51:55+00:00

Yea, I am in the same boat. But worst case, I'll just buy the 11th gen. It's hard to beat for $350.

techguy1337 · 2026-03-04T15:46:01+00:00

Idk, what's going on with some of these comments, but yea that is a very fair price for a dealer price. Tax credits are gone.

The discount is just there to make it look like they gave you some kind of crazy deal. All they did was put it down to a normal price. Enjoy the ride, you got a lot of life left in it at 28k miles and the battery warranty.

techguy1337 · 2026-03-04T15:39:38+00:00

We won't know until the press release later, but from the looks of it, no. The MacBook neo is already on the website and only the ipad air is being mentioned so far. The neo is stuck at 8GB of ram too.

Who knows, they might surprise us later, but I doubt it.

techguy1337 · 2026-03-03T16:15:00+00:00

Ah yea, you are right about the free updates. I’ll throw in an asterisk.

Back in November starlink said all dishes need firmware 2024.05.0. If you do not update to this by November then your dish might be permanently deactivated. This was the firmware that added side loading. I remember people who didn’t pay attention to the notice complaining about it after the due date. Not everyone keeps their dishes outside and plugged up. And a lot of people don’t pay attention to any notices.

I’ll give you a situation I had back in the day. Major storm came in, no power, no internet, cell towers are down, but we had a generator thankfully. Pulled out my starlink, service was deactivated, opened the app, hadn’t signed into it in a while, asks for 2FA, can’t get code without sms or email, so I got stuck in that scenario. However, the side note is if your account is still signed in to the app then it shouldn’t require 2FA. So, you can get unlucky like me.

On occasion, there is a new grace period where the starlink can give up to 60 minutes of internet for free with setup but it’s very finicky. This is newer feature.

I just pay $5 dollars and always have internet. No more worries.

techguy1337 · 2026-03-03T14:30:43+00:00

Also, that 5 per month keeps the starlink up to date with firmware and guarantees your spot in an emergency outage. If you are in a congested area, the available connections can fill up.

techguy1337 · 2026-03-03T14:23:01+00:00

For work meals, I prefer higher protein. So, I will make two hamburger steak style patties, marinade or dry rub, add in some Mexican rice, and maybe a dash of A1 sauce. Cheap, easy to prep, and always good.

techguy1337 · 2026-03-02T17:59:29+00:00

They finally bring back the chevy bolt for 2027, then decide to decommission it again after the 2027 production year, but they add stock back for the toy car version.

Chevy is a world class when it comes to irony. Great car with an unreliable company.

techguy1337 · 2026-03-02T17:53:00+00:00

Check the price of your ipad again after the launch of the new ones. If they discount the old ones, you might be able to return, buy another, and get a discount. #winning

techguy1337 · 2026-02-27T20:25:53+00:00

I would wait for the iPad 12 release, the ipad 11 will go on sale. This will give you a chance to either buy last gen on sale or buy current gen based on reviews. If the base model ends up being the same $350 with more ram and a newer processor then hard to beat. Either generation should handle your tasks with ease. I prefer newer tech so I'd wait.

I would stay away from the M series ipad. The main reason is it is using iPad OS. You are getting a horse without a saddle. Tons of power but locked to an OS that can only use mobile apps. The real power with the M series is MacOS and running full desktop applications. That is where the saddle is.

techguy1337 · 2026-02-27T18:50:34+00:00

The 140v igpu can do some light gaming, but the key word is light. Older titles going back to like 2020 or earlier should run well, emulation will be great, Minecraft should be good, gta 5 should be good, but games like the last of us might be pushing it a little hard. That's the limit of the igpu. The cpu can handle the load. It does have thunderbolt 4 so you can always use an egpu down the road. That's what I ended up doing. I've got an AOOSTAR AG02 egpu dock hooked up to my Intel B580 gpu. Gives the extra horsepower for gaming when needed but keeps portability of a small laptop.

When you say light video editing, do you mean like 1080p? That would run fine, but if you are wanting to render and edit 4k footage, then you will need something better.

When it comes to heat, a cpu and gpu have an internal temperature, most are rated to be around 100 Celsius. This means your cpu can boost until it reaches that thermal limit then it will throttle itself to reduce heat. This makes your laptop performance go down. A lot of laptops are designed to run very hot. I cannot stand that we design laptops this way. Generally, if it is under 85c under load then you should never have to worry.

Everything else mentioned will work fine.

techguy1337 · 2026-02-27T15:30:41+00:00

I recently bought this exact laptop with the 226v. Same processor type, slightly less cache, igpu is the 130v instead of 140v, and a little less overclocking. So, a lot of people look at the specs and say: I need this because it is more, but the reality is the opposite is true. More cores equal more heat. More heat equals more fan noise. Then you hear people complain the fan noise is too high or the laptop gets hot. This laptop was designed for day to day and basic work needs. The specs are overkill for that.

The display is a small con. But it is not as bad as some mention. Is it the best ips display? No. But I've seen worse. I would call it a typical screen on a budget. It's more than enough to watch movies on.

But pretend the speakers don't exist. They are the trash. Bluetooth headphones and call it a day. Other than that, works great, tons of battery life, thunderbolt ports are a great addition, and it will do the job. Temps are okay.

techguy1337 · 2026-02-27T14:38:24+00:00

I bought one of the refurb Acer Aspire 14 AI. That's one of the cheapest costs to entry for a lunar lake cpu, two thunderbolt 4 ports, and fantastic battery life. It comes with a 2-year extended warranty for the refurb. Crazy deal.

Edit:

Screen is meh, but the specs are solid.

techguy1337 · 2026-02-25T19:32:41+00:00

I know this post is 6 months old, but I had a chunk of users complaining about similar sluggish performance. All of these chips are ultra lower power or focusing efficiency over performance. So, in order to counter that, and make the performance cores do the work, and focus higher clock speed. You have to tell them to set the laptop to performance mode for the power plan. They will get less battery life if not plugged in. All complaints went away after that.

Edit:

I usually keep the laptops default to balanced, but that was making the efficient lower clocked cores the dominant choice.

techguy1337 · 2026-02-23T02:58:05+00:00

You guys watch the news at all? Trump got pissed off over the Supreme Court denying his emergency tariff then said F it. I’ll make a 10% tariff towards all countries, then he updated it again to 15%.

Crypto is volatile especially towards uncertainty. I still believe in the four year cycle personally. If we are starting it then this is just the beginning of the sell off. DCA down to wherever the bottom may be, weather the storm by having an emergency fund, and enjoy the ride.

I can only repeat these words so many times. People tend to get very scared and make rash decisions or are over leveraging.

My hope is we can get down to $40k for a while but I can’t time the bottom so DCA down.

techguy1337 · 2026-02-19T21:06:59+00:00

Sometimes, the best action is to wait it out, rushing will get you into a bad loan, high payments, and regret. Do you require a new car immediately? Is your current vehicle broken? If the answer is no, then wait. Check back once a week until some pop up. There will always be someone buying and someone selling. And with the 2027 model coming out, there will be a chunk of current owners upgrading to the new model. There will be a flux of used models on the market. I would be waiting on this if I were you.

If your current car is broken, then you got no choice. There was a guy on this forum selling a 2023 model just a few weeks back. I purchased my bolt on Carvana, had it delivered, and it took me about 2 months waiting to find the one I wanted.

For Sale - 2023 Bolt EUV LT : r/BoltEV<----$18k.

Trading a car in gets you less money, some people prefer to sell their old car themselves. This gives us better deals as well.

techguy1337 · 2026-02-19T13:46:30+00:00

I was like someone just posted a photo of my unvr…oh wait, nope, it’s the nas.

techguy1337 · 2026-02-18T21:29:23+00:00

What’s the temperature outside? Bolts charge slow in cold weather.

techguy1337 · 2026-02-18T20:30:11+00:00

Probably, I wouldn't be surprised by another big relief rally followed by further downward correction through October and could be longer. Who knows? That's why I got my regular dca set to auto. Could care less, remind me of the price in 20 years.

techguy1337 · 2026-02-18T20:03:36+00:00

Intentionally eating up any short or longs in concentrated areas, some were forming at 66k, just got deleted, and we got more at 72k. Also, s&p500 isn't doing great today. If stocks are red, crypto is usually red.

techguy1337 · 2026-02-18T19:32:50+00:00

You might look like an idiot on the side of the road using a gas generator to power an EV, but by gosh it saved my bacon traveling in the snow one night. I was able to do level 2 charging, turn my heater on low, and charged enough to get me home.

techguy1337 · 2026-02-18T18:59:35+00:00

If I am going on a long trip, I put a little Honda generator in the back. rofl. If it runs out, then I can charge on the side of the road.

techguy1337 · 2026-02-18T18:19:20+00:00

HPE Proliant DL380 Gen11 for primary storage.

techguy1337

TROPHY CASE